Most projects do not fail because of bad design. They fail because of bad revision rounds. The brief is good, the first draft is good, and then a series of well-meaning emails arrive that drift the work, slowly, toward something nobody actually wanted.
We have, over time, written down a grammar for revisions. There are three kinds of feedback we accept on a draft. First, factual: this number is wrong, this paragraph is missing, this person is no longer at the company. We act on factual feedback the same day. Second, structural: the navigation should not be there, the about page should come second. Structural feedback comes from one named decision-maker and is logged in a single document. Third, taste: this color feels too cold, this paragraph is too long. Taste feedback is welcome, weighed, and sometimes ignored — with a written explanation when we ignore it.
The grammar matters because the most expensive revision rounds in our experience are the ones where taste feedback is presented as factual feedback. “This is wrong” is hard to argue with. “I would prefer it warmer” is a conversation. The first version sends us back to a blank page. The second version makes a one-line CSS change.
If you are about to commission a website, agree on a grammar of revisions before the work starts. Pick a single person who has the final say. Write down the difference between things that are wrong and things that you would prefer differently. Your project will ship a month sooner.